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Unix Operating Systems Software

Rich Stevens Article in Salon 63

Posted by Hemos from the memorializing-the-great-ones dept.
disappear writes "A nice (albeit primarily nontechnical) article about the late, great Rich Stevens is in Salon today. A gentle, sweet look at the author of TCP/IP Illustratedamong other books."
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Rich Stevens Article in Salon More

Rich Stevens Article in Salon

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  • Re:Further editions? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm not sure what the protocol is for creating new editions of a book by a deceased author...

    My wife reads books by an author named V.C. Andrews, whose been dead for better than 10 years. Andrews (ghost apparently) still pumps out 2-3 new books a year.
  • Thanks for the cookies, Richard. See you in the next life maybe.
  • Maybe all this technology is still too young to be considered important in the history of the modern world...
    Which is why someone ought to be collecting, gathering, collating, organizing, and storing it (the history). Witnesses to many of the important things that happened are still alive, and can be interviewed to find out not only the what, but also the how, and even the why.

    Hal Duston
    hald@sound.net
    If Al Gore invented the internet, why is it named after George W. Bush?

  • Why? Are there "History of Mechanical Engineering" classes? Or "History of Biological Sciences"?

    There aren't, because the important history is taught along with the material in the regular classes. "We know [blah] because [blah] discovered/confirmed it using this experiment/equation."

    My Comp. Sci. classes were the same way. We were told all about the origins of the languages we were learning, the historical reasons for various aspects of systems programming, etc. If your classes aren't telling you where all this information is coming from, perhaps you're not at the best of CS schools. (No offense intended.)
  • Yup you are right that you will not be able to learn from him anymore but thats not all bad. Think about the wonderful foundation you now have! You can now go it alone.

    At some point the student must leave the classroom.

  • Wow +2 Insightful?I wouldn't normally reply to something like this, but s/he's tricked at least a few people already...

    Interesting points, with no proof of any of them...

    I've never heard of anybody named "Erin Delsteppino"

    I find it hard to believe that a company like QUE would turn his books down, only to have them picked up by Addison-Weseley.

    I've never seen a file called RSTEV.NLM, although I guess it could possibly exist... I also have not heard that he worked for novell, although I am definately not an expert on his personal life.

    And as a sidebar, adding quotation marks to heresey doesn't really add any truth to the statement.
  • That particular story, one year ago, was easily the low-point for /. Linux and Perl bigots were posting the foulest trash about Stevens. Moderators tried to keep things under control, but they were simply overwhelmed. I know that a lot of us were incredibly bothered by the whole thing. It was horrible.

    IIRC, karma was introduced because of this.

    Anyway, it nice to see that some ppl do treasure what Stevens gave to the Unix community. My understanding of TCP/IP and shared memory is due to three of his books that I have.

  • I don't know if what you write is true or not. If it is true (and for some reason I believe you), then the behavior of a bunch of "kids" is simply pathetic. Many of the trolls here (and elsewhere) exhibit the same behavior as script kiddies who think that they understand this shit. They base their self-worth on how good they think they are; not what others think, or what their two neurons transmit.

    I'm a scientist who has witnessed the crap that women have to put up with. I've seen women mentally abused by the status quo. I've also seen worse. Ever hear of the term, "Hands on training?".

    I never met Stevens, although his books have really helped me out. But ultimately you are correct. Remember the dead, but embrace the living.

  • it's a nice article, but there's nothing really about his strategy for staying on the island.

  • Perhaps your needs would be better met by a diploma program. University is supposed to be theoretical and part of that is learning to appreciate how your discipline got where it is today.

  • Perhaps your needs would be better met by a diploma program. University is supposed to be theoretical and part of that is learning to appreciate how your discipline got where it is today.

  • You're just not looking at the right universities. Trent University [trentu.ca] is traditionally a liberal arts institution, so when they added a computer science department [trentu.ca], it was decided that it wouldn't focus on just the science aspect. Now you can get a degree in Computer Studies and all CS students are required to take a minimum amount of ethics and history courses.

  • >
    >- English wasn't his primary language.
    >

    so what's your point?
    or was that a joke?

    you're saying, someone who speaks another language at home can't write well in English?

    I won't even go into how wrong... and ignorant... that is...
  • I first want to say that I have the utmost respect for W. Richard Stevens and have all of his books and this post is *not* a troll.
    I guess that inquiring minds want to know, but I am interested in what caused his untimely demise.
    Does anyone know?

    dmp

  • There's a reason why I read at level 1. Bullshit like this is the primary one. Don't you have a life? Can't you pick on somebody who's alive to defend themselves?

    Sheesh
    -russ
  • Back when I was a young sys admin in training at my old school I was sitting in the office working on something. This was a big room which all the support staff shared, and it wasn't odd for someone to shout out ``How do you X'' or where can I find out about Y'' and get a good answer if there was one, or a good laugh if there wasn't or, more usually, both. The head admin was trying to figure out some problem with rlogin and it wasn't going well and he called out ``Does anyone have the source code to rlogin handy?'' probably expecting a round of laughter and general complaints about the Unix we were using at the time. What he probably didn't expect was for one of the students who hung around the office all the time to say, ``Yeah, I have it in my backpack.'' Of course this was insane, and we all gathered around as he pulled a copy of Unix Network Programming out of his backpack, and it has source code to rlogin in it. I was able to spend a little time leafing through the book, and knew then and there that one day I must have it.
  • http://www.google.com/search?q=Franklin+Stamm
    http://www.google.com/search?q=Erin+Delsteppino

    What this particular AC is saying is true and all really happened.... in his mind.
  • Here is an excerpt from UNIX Network Programming: Networking APIs: Sockets and XTI: Volume 1, Second Edition.
    • As usual, but contrary to popular fads, I produced camera-ready copy of the book using the wonderful Groff package written by James Clark. I typed all 291,972 words using the vi editor, created the 201 illustrations using the gpic program (using many of Gary Wright's macros), producted the 81 tables using the gtbl program, performed all the indexing, and did the final page layout. Dave Hanson's loom program and some scripts by Gary Wright were used to include the source code in the book. A set of awk scripts written by Jon Bentley and Brian Kernighan helped in producing the final index.

    W. Richard Stevens was a God.

    I would have given anything to have studied under him.

  • I disagree. It is important to recognize that these books were a very personal and individual effort and that is what made them great. Unlike so many books in the technical market they don't follow some generic publisher guidelines or formulas. It would be hard for any author to live up to what Stevens delivered, and even a very good author would have to face some tough choices about how to "fit" in with the rest of the books.

    If the publisher lets the books remain as they are, they will still stay in print a long time and remain important. Part of what made these books great is that they are not specific to one platform or vendor, but outline the technology itself.
  • Gives ghostwriting a new spin, at the very least.
  • I just like how you know that Richard Stevens is a true geek because it said so in Waynes World II.
  • The best moment at the USENIX technical conference this year, by far, was the spantaneous 5 minute standing ovation given by the entire conference when Steven's family was presented with a lifetime achievement award for Mr. Steven's excellent work.
  • You, and your colleagues, must be making pretty stupid programs then. Lokk at the basic libraries needed to run any halfway decent program, and realize that calculus (and algebra, basically math in general) is necessary and heavely used in many of them.
  • You put an extra er on the end of that.

  • IMHO, it's ridiculous that there are no courses in Universities that relate to the history of couputing

    What i think is even more reprohensable is that at The University of South Australia (Mawson Lakes Campus [formerly the Levels]), they are moveing away from unix alot. Last year they installed a STUPID MS Exchange E-Mail farm, and are moving to Java for the teaching language (no C any more).[This is not a bag on Java]
    And just the other day i was reading a Lecurers notes that he hands out to students on unix (for part of the subject that fortunately required UNIX), and one of the many, but in my opinion the worst mistake that was made was that he stated that the verion of unix that students were allowed to use was the tcsh version. I mean it is a frigging SHELL not a version! *shudder*

    UniSA's web page [unisa.edu.au]


    .sig = .plan = NULL;
  • wrong. the link took me directly to Tom's comment. Thats what the '#' is for - to take you to a bookmark.
  • Reading archived /. discussions is not easy, so I couldn't find anything specific about Stevens's opinions re Linux, if they were ever posted. Anybody have a link?

    As for the childish "I'm glad he's dead" crap, I can only wonder why anybody even pays attention to that stuff. Anybody who knows Stevens's work respects and admires him. Anything else is just noise.

  • spacebarsamong other books
  • Sure, algebra is completely indispensible in programming - no one disputes that. And trig has its uses. But what was the last time you used a derivative in a program??
  • I hate "history of" classes. Seems like "Hero worship 101". I can see a use for a "history of computing" class if the history that was being covered was the origin of standards - understanding the Teletype Model 33, for example, lends some insight into the newline character problem.

    But being taught that Bageeno Hormonis invented the Univac III and his wife had six sons and one of them went to Oxford and they were trying to build a computer out of clockwork, ha, ha, isn't that funny - would be a waste of time. Of course, Universities are all about putting wastes of time in the curriculum - like the fact that CS majors in many Universities are required to take three semesters of Calculus before even going into CS101. I'm a professional programmer. I work with professional programmers. I've never seen anyone use calculus, ever. I've only seen people use trig maybe twice.
  • I'm a professional programmer. I work with professional programmers. I've never seen anyone use calculus, ever. I've only seen people use trig maybe twice.

    You've never recognised the use of calculus on a programmer. That's a different concept altogether. Calculus can be seen as the foundation of programming. No foundation, and the whole building comes apart.

  • Man, I couldn't agree more. Can you imagine how much poorer we would be as a people if our history had been cleaned up prior to preserving? I don't understand why Slashdot does not archive everything. It seems like the true essence of Slashdot is not being preserved.

  • Yup, dynamic, and (ideally) down to -1. There's a lot of interesting AC stuff at 0 which does not make it, particularly in longer debates. IMHO, the way people talk about things amongst each other is often as interesting as what they are talking about, trolls and all. Some of the articles (e.g. Napster, DeCSS) are discussing what could be pivotal and historical moments. Preserving what people said about them at the time is crucial insurance against a future when they will be rewritten by historians with the benefit of hindsight ... Anyway, these are meant to be discussions, so why not archive them as such?
  • Yep nice article, I like the part about going to see Wayne's World (II) with his son and seeing a character in that film is carrying one of his books :-)

    I have come to Stevens pretty late, I didn't buy my first book until after his sad death. The improvement in my own understanding and craft is immense after reading his work. Quite often it's infuriating to read a technical book and have it pose more questions than it answers. With Stevens is very different. For me the UNP and APUE works are truly excellent.

  • Calculus can be seen as the foundation of programming

    How's that? Do you consider discrete math the stepchild of calculus? I've always thought of it as separate but equal, and certainly closer to the foundations of programming.

  • I agree with you, but remember, history classes (like any other classes for that matter) are only as interesting as the teacher. On the subject of calculus, I disagree. I don't use it, but I can easily imagine a few cases where it can be useful: signal processing, compression, etc. Calculus is the basis of a lot of stuff that's out there. As I write this, I remember my girlfriend asking me to name one practical everyday of logarithms. I couldn't come up with any :( You might be right after all... My COBOL & LISP classes, I definitly could've lived without. JPM.
  • You might try blowing Cmdr Taco.
  • andrew's newest releases have, infact, been released under his permissions from a third party company based in CA
  • That particular story, one year ago, was easily the low-point for /. Linux and Perl bigots were posting the foulest trash about Stevens. Moderators tried to keep things under control, but they were simply overwhelmed. I know that a lot of us were incredibly bothered by the whole thing. It was horrible.

    As offensive and childish as that stuff was, the fact is that Stevens was no longer alive at that point. Meanwhile, trolls had for about a year been conducting a vendetta against a particular woman who worked for a Linux company. (I won't help them out by mentioning her name but she was the original "naked and petrified" woman.) Admittedly she was a twit, but she hardly deserved a systematic campaign of harassment, threats and much fouler abuse than anything directed at Stevens. It basically ruined her life and career. And no one thought there was anything particularly wrong with that; CmdrTaco thought it was funny in a stupid way.

    But then the author of a Unix text dies, gets similar treatment and Rob writes an editorial about how horrible the trolls are. And people wonder why women find IT and CS unappealing career choices.

    For that matter, Natalie Portman is a human being, too.

    ---------

  • I think it's undoubted that the history of computing will be a class sooner or later.

    At high school, I was (forced) to learn the Industrial Revolution in history classes. I think what's happening with the Net is every bit as dramatic and important as the Industrial Revolution was.

    In 100 years time, teenagers will be being bored by the Information Revolution in history class, just like I was bored by the Industrial Revolution!

  • I would have appreciated a class like this when I was working on my Computer Science degree. While there were a few lectures on when certain developments were made, the courses were lacking in genuine historical background.

    Personally, I think it would be beneficial to have a course where you learned about the people who made these developments and the environment that they were made in. Maybe it could show Comp. Sci. students that not everything has to be done in a cubicle...

    Of course, it would also be nice if they actually taught some courses for current programming languages as well....

    Kierthos
  • You need the Slashdot Cruiser.

    Assuming you don't mind being seen in a totally rediculous looking car. That thing is so fugly. I mean forget-first-post-and-get-me-to-a-paint-shop fugly.
  • I would give it another 20 years and we will probably start seeing classes devoted too the history of computing/networking/internet et al.
    It wont be terribly popular at first as old farts like me who are still in college would gain nothing from the class but as a generation from now goes to classes who did not witness what people like you me and others of this board who work and live what we have seen devolope even in the last decade, the next generation will need to be taught. But i hope somebody has paid attention to how it has all formed, or 30 years from now my grandson may be taught in college how some putz named Gore started the internet. -shudder-
    To sum up, i know that eventually there will be classes covering computer/networking technology growth as a history, i just hope they get their damn facts strait.

    -History is writen by the winning side
    (some smart guy, Churchill?)
  • I just went and read through the thread. While I couldn't see the posts that had been moderated down, what I did see were lots of posts falling over themselves trying to be all grand and flowery about the whole troll issue; in other words, YHBT. The only truly insightful comment I read was #271 by Lauri Alanko.

    Most slashdot readers are not nearly as flowing and elegant in their prose as the like to think. the same thing happened when alec Guiness's death was mentioned here. Lots of writers tried to outdo each other with the most moving oratory. People, it's a guy who acted in some good movies. Or a guy who wrote several really popular Unix books. Maybe you knew him, maybe you didn't. But wasting 5K on a speech that isn't even being broadcast is a little overboard, IMHO. We should be respectful of the dead. We shouldn't need to resort to such dramatic prose. A simple "I knew him, he was great, I'll miss him" ought to suffice. (Besides, it's more in line with the Unix philosophy: smaller statements that combine to form a more powerful whole)

    Now watch this post disappear into the sub-ether (along with eddie's sofa)...

  • Hey! I was in that class! I felt lucky to finally get to see "the man" in action and he did not let me down. He always gave his courses and I kept saying "Next time. Next time." Finally that time came.

    You know how well he writes? Well his lectures were just as fluid. Master communicatior.

    I didn't think at the time that it would be my last chance to take one of his courses.

  • It would be nice to see a highly respected author take over the series from Mr. Stevens and coninue pumping out new editions - these texts are too important not to be updated.

    I think the only text that really is dated is Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment. And since it focuses primarily on POSIX and common functionality among BSD/SYSV systems, it is still a very useful book. Also, some of the dated material on IPC is available in updated form in the UNP Volume II that was released before Steven's death (Which might help explain why Stevens didn't bother re-writing APUE).

    As for his other books, the TCP/IP series, from what I know (I actually just started reading it), is only a little dated since IPV6 hadn't been decided yet (though it is fully covered in UNP 2nd edition).

    And, as I said, the Unix Network Programming 2nd edition, volumes I and II were rewritten (written) in 1998 and are safely current for a good long time.

  • Remember the Hacker's Dictionary entry for Knuth? I think the basic jist of it was that since Knuth is a computing god, and TAOCP contains almost everything, it was known as a very generic hacker answer to tough technical questions, "Oh, I think you can find that in Knuth". The funny part is that I've heard the same thing about Steven's books. If you ask a really tough question about the nitty gritty of tcp or udp and nobody knows the answer, more likely than not you're going to hear, "Oh, go read UNIX Network Programming by W. Richard Stevens". So in that way, I suppose Stevens has reached the same amount of acclaim as Knuth, albeit in the network area. His books kicked ass. His death was a great loss.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Impact (Score:2)

    by jjr ( 6873 )
    Everyone understands the impact people like Rich Stevens made in the lives of Unix programmer. I am glad to see that articles like this pay it due respects.
  • Though I can't find it offered any more, I took a University of Minnesota course devoted entirely to computer history. It started with the works of Babbage but focused primarily on the era between post-ENIAC and pre-IBM PC. Fascinating stuff. I wish I'd held onto my textbook. I'm surprised these sorts of technical history courses aren't offered more.
  • The "ersatz mana" part reminds me a little bit of something Orson Scott Card had to say in his book on how to write SF... basically, he said that it's easy to be seduced by people who treat you as if everything you say is clever and fascinating... and your spouse and kids and closest friends can't really compete with that because they know you too well. :) And yet, without the support of people with whom you have substantive relationships, you can lose not only a lot of what provides a high quality of life, but even your ability to perform and relate to others. Mana, if you will, perhaps. (Sometimes I wonder if anyone knows what mana is).

    I don't think this applies to Stephens (and I think it is Stephens with a ph, by the way) in the sense that I think he may have abused celebrity this way... but it might help explain why Stephens sister just saw him as her brother. Not such a bad thing, really. At least, for him to work at. Perhaps part of the "dangerous charge" that I've heard mana described as is the threat that those relationships will color yours with a new individual too much. This would fit with what Pirsig wrote in "Lila" (which is where I assume you're taking your info) about going straight to hell once you get famous. Ersatz mana (negative relationship vectors) discoloring relationships at the outset.

    Tangentially, I think that community is a bigger part of hacker/open source culture than it is contemporary mainstream, which is why mana or egoboo or whatever you might want to term or call things would be more important within it, but not seen so much outside of it.

    I think Card, what with all his talk of individual mystical talents in some of his fiction, would also be intruiged by the statement To everyone who knew him (Stephens), it seemd he cared about the things that mattered most to them. That's a very powerful way to build real relationships with people.
  • I had the honor of exchanging a couple of emails with Mr. Stevens just a month before he was gone. He told me he was working on APUE (Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment) and it would take 18 months to finish it.

    Also I asked Gary wright to follow his work.

    This was a heavy loss for us Unix programmers.

  • I noticed the unix network programming book in wayne's world II, and I recognized it as a good book, but it rarely occurs to me to think much about the author, which I suppose is a pitty.

    The reason fro there being no history in computing science, is that history is quite a difference subject from the science of computing. I'd agree though that some sort of perspective can be very usefull. In general though, as with actors, directors, authors, polititians, musicians and almost all people (like what does RMS stand for anyway) I don't think of names as being the important part.

    But then I did find it amusing recently to find that Donald Knuth basically stopped writing his series in order to nit-pick about the formatting through writing Tex. Well, I'm sure that's otherwise commong knowledge.

    -Daniel

  • There isn't any mention of Microsoft and Al Gore inventing the internet and TCP/IP from scratch.
  • Here's the link [slashdot.org] to original Slashdot article that I mentioned. Most of the reprehensible comments were moderated down so they didn't survive the archiving. Tom's comment is #242.

  • I've never been part of the UNIX community. I just decided one day to learn C; helped debug a MUD, read some books. No classes, no mentors, not really any guidance or intention of taking it any further than a hobby. That was around my sophmore year of college.

    It was just last week I found out about Richard Stevens death and I could not believe how much I could feel for a man I had never met. It's been about a year now that I've been religiously stopping in every bookstore I pass to see if they yet have a copy of "UNIX Network Programming vol 3." My girlfriend asked me if there were other books that would cover the same subject matter. She didn't understand.

    So I'm on Amazon to see if it's planned to be published and read a review on vol 2 that mentions his passing. I was floored. Just as much as Steve McConnell's books helped me transition from a programmer to a software engineer and engineering manager, Richard Stevens is largely responsible for getting me here in the first place.

    I regret never being able to read volume 3. I regret all the learning that I and others will miss out on because the world is without him. Most of all I regret never thinking to send a simple email to thank him for what he has given us all.

    I did have a mentor, we just never met.

    Rest in peace, Richard.

    -- ShadyG

  • IMHO, it's ridiculous that there are no courses in Universities that relate to the history of couputing. I think that every Computer Science major should at least learn who invented the important stuff. Maybe all this technology is still too young to be considered important in the history of the modern world, but TCP/IP did in fact have as much (if not more) influence on the average Joe's everyday life as the theory of relativity...

  • The article mentions that Unix Network Programming spans three volumes. Last year, when Stevens passed away I remember reading somewhere that someone would look at the state of the third volume to see if it could be published (after some editing). So what's the story with the applications volume, has it/is it going to be published? Does anyone know?

  • I took a class from Stephens (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01, 2000 @07:39AM (#810574)
    A couple of years ago I was at the USENIX technical conference in New Orleans. I took a unix network programming tutorial from him.

    In just a few hours I went from almost zero knowledge, to being fairly confident of my ability to write decent networking code in C. He was a wonderful teacher. He'll be missed.

  • "It blew my mind," says his sister, Claire Stevens. "I knew he wrote those books, but it never made a dent. I had absolutely no idea that all these people knew and were touched by him." Claire and Richard's wife, Sally, accepted the award on Stevens' behalf. Stevens died on Sept. 1, 1999. He was 48 years old.

    I've spent a little bit of time among some polynesian cultural enclaves in the US, and taken a class or two on polynesian culture, and this statement resonated with an explanation of mana
    once given to me (by Paul Cox, in case anyone knows who he is...). It goes something like this...

    Most people tend to view mana as a mystical energy, and in some senses it both is this way and is viewed this way by polynesian people. But it's not simply a quality existing in the person; it's the result of the sum of the person's relationships -- their community, their family, etc. Part of it is their standing, but part of it is just the existence relationships themselves.

    In US culture, it sometimes seems that we discount these things -- or downplay more subtle things. Sure, people fawn over CEOs and those who are rich and celebrity (which Robert Pirsig says is to social relationships what porn is to sex... celebrity=ersatz mana? or real?), but we miss other things. It's interesting to me that Steven's sister could be entirely unaware of her connection with someone who had a powerful relationship with a community. It's interesting how much we see people as individuals, and often fail to realize all the personal vectors that converge on them... or us.

  • Further editions? (Score:4)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Friday September 01, 2000 @07:35AM (#810576)
    It would be nice to see a highly respected author take over the series from Mr. Stevens and coninue pumping out new editions - these texts are too important not to be updated.

    I'm not sure what the protocol is for creating new editions of a book by a deceased author, but I would really like to see these books stay the definitive texts in their fields.

  • home page is back (Score:5)

    by Chris Siegler ( 3170 ) on Friday September 01, 2000 @08:14AM (#810577)

    It disappeared for a while after his death, but Gary Wright, co-author from TCP/IP Vol II, put Steven's old home page [kohala.com] back up. It's a treasure chest of cool info. The FAQ [kohala.com] is good reading if you've read any of his books.

    Gary still keeps the Stevens spirit alive too

    P.S. The site is still running on a BSDI machine and I used vi to update the pages. :-)

  • Rich Stevens is Part of Slashdot's Sordid Past (Score:5)

    by tealover ( 187148 ) on Friday September 01, 2000 @07:36AM (#810578)
    Do you remember when he passed and there was this guy making nasty comments about him, basically saying that he was happy that he had died? There were so many outraged people that day. I remember reading a response from Tom Christiansen, who knew Rich very well, who basically wrote a moving comment and stated that he was ashamed about what he was reading.

    It was interesting to watch the responses from the multitudes of people who, although they didn't know Rich personally, respected his talents and book writing skills. I myself have learned quite a bit about Unix and Networking from Rich and feel ever indebted.

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